Chris Anderson's new book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price"

Chris Anderson’s new book is causing a storm and firing up conversations amongst the internet gurus. You can read it here — for free — and decide for yourself. This version should include notes / references that were missing from the printend copy and prompted some critques on plagiarism. I intend to check it out myself, then buy it if I like it. It’s awesome to be able to access it freely (in its entirety), but I already find it hard to read long documents on my laptop, much less a 288 pages. I wouldn’t mind paying for it in exchange of preventing me from experiencing more RSI symptoms. However, I might have to wait a bit longer as supposedly, the first print doesn’t contain all the notes and references.

What I’m hoping to uncover in all these conversations is the fact that this whole debate is not entirely about economics but an ecosystem in need of rethinking — where content, resources, value and soical benefits co-exist and collide.

Here are some of the discussions and reviews on the book and the questions of whether free is indeed the future. I got the longer list from squidoo where you can the RSS feed to keep yourself in the loop. The other sources (1st part) are from ReadWriteWeb.

The original New Yorker article: Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson: Books: The New Yorker

Seth Godin posted that Malcom was wrong.

Mike Masnick’s post on Techdirt

Fred Wilson elaborates on Frremium and Freeconomics

Mark Cuban posits that if you succeed by free, you die by free.

Brad Feld took a step back and asked: would you want it if it were free?

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The Limitations of FREE; Godin vs. Gladwell @ Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Chris’ take: The Long Tail – Wired Blogs

Free vs Freely Distributed « blog maverick

Much Ado About Nothing

Michelle Haimoff: The World of Free and The Huffington Post